Tag Archives: Dead Red Velvet

Tape Life Records presents Dead Red Velvet’s second release, Skeleton Shore, a six-song romp through dark techno, gritty electropop and cinematic dark ambient. The follow-up to The Ghostly Divide drops the guitars in favour of Mohr’s trademark synth work, seducing with urgent songs touching on arboreal ghosts, Austrian immigration, nuclear power and otherworldly luminosity. Culled mostly from the period 2004-2006, this is Mohr’s most tonally-consistent work. An electronic music acid bath of edge and depth, this short album is recommended for fans of 80s alternative, dark ambient, golden era industrial, Skinny Puppy and darker sides of Shriekback.

SELECTED RECORDINGS FROM 2004-2006, EXCEPT 06 FROM 2011, PUBLISHED BY MULTIBEAT MUSIC (SOCAN) AND REMASTERED FOR TAPE LIFE RECORDS IN 2019.

VOCAL SAMPLES ON 01 BY JULIA GALIOS. SOPRANO VOICE ON 05 BY KRISTIN MUELLER. COVER IMAGE IS FROM THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR 02, DIRECTED BY ELIZABETH FEARON, SHOT BY GILLIAN WILLIAMSON. PAPER MOUNTAIN DESIGNED AND BUILT BY EDMUND LAW. SLEEVE DESIGN BY SITUATSI.

Tape Life presents the eighth and final Karl Mohr Audio-Yo release: Standard Deviation, a dark ambient film score. Following his 1997 techno-industrial tour de force, The Heck, Mohr switched gears into songwriting as Dead Red Velvet, but not before composing this dire soundtrack to Samuel Kiehoon Lee’s independent feature, Standard Deviation. The film concerns psychic hotlines, lottery pyramid schemes and the Y2K Problem; the accompanying music is no less intriguing. Acoustic and electronic instruments blend tastefully with copious sampling – the album stands as a mature, sophisticated and textured body of work. This pivotal release echoes, in chrysalis anguish, Mohr’s early experiments and also foreshadows the bleak, downcast goth elements found in Dead Red Velvet. Recommended listening for fans of film music and dark ambient; reminds at times of Peter Gabriel’s Passion or Alexander Zlamal’s score for Heller als der Mond.

SELECTED RECORDINGS FROM 1997
PUBLISHED BY MULTIBEAT MUSIC (SOCAN) AND
REMASTERED FOR TAPE LIFE RECORDS IN 2017.

MUSIC COMPOSED FOR THE SAMUEL KIEHOON LEE FILM,STANDARD DEVIATION (1997). THE VOICE ON 04 IS SAMPLED
DIALOG FROM THE FILM AND IS USED BY PERMISSION.
SPECIAL THANKS: S. K. LEE, I. REVELL, E. MOHR, V. MARCONE.

COVER IMAGES ARE STILLS FROM THE FILM. DESIGN BY SITUATSI.
BPM VALUES ARE APPROXIMATE AND MAY DRIFT.